In addition to its tension with underlying constitutional principle, this is almost certainly a counterproductive response to populist challenges. Bollinger’s response to collapsing trust is to insist that citizens and their direct or indirect representatives are entitled to only a nominal role in the direction of institutions that claim to act in their interest and spend money derived from taxes they pay. Rather than defusing the issue, he vindicates suspicion that academics believe they are philosopher kings.
Bollinger is also wrong to suggest that the status of a “branch” of government confers independence from the other branches. At one point he suggests that university presidents called before congressional committees should conduct themselves in a manner comparable to Supreme Court justices, who generally refuse to comment on their rulings in particular cases. Bollinger does not mention that Supreme Court justices are nominated by elected presidents, confirmed by elected senators, and subject to removal if their conduct is found outrageous. Judges are permitted a high level of discretion because they have been chosen and assessed by members of other branches, and because their personal conduct and institutional budgets are subject to external judgment. Bollinger is presumably not encouraging similar constraints on faculty members and administrators, which would go beyond even the oversight exercised by state governments over public universities.
What Bollinger really seems to have in mind for the academy is not a component of republican government at all. His discussion of “the university’s role as the fifth branch of the nation” evokes the medieval idea that the political community is divided into distinct “estates” that cooperate for certain purposes but are primarily accountable to their own members. Given the medieval origins of the university, it’s not surprising that there’s an affinity between the concepts. Still, a conception of the academy as an autonomous estate or guild is hard to square with a Constitution authorized by an undivided “we, the people.”